Sunday, September 18, 2016

I really like Des Moines Register/Juice and I think Joe Lawler does a great job. So, I dont read Cityview in some sort of misguided attempt to avoid the mainstream and fight the corporate overlords; I just think Chad Taylor is a really good writer and seems to always have something interesting to say. Even if I disagree from time to time.
- from Dave Murphy on an Ames Tribune article

"The best part about any art is when you can see someone succeed with honesty and reckless abandon. Like, they don’t care what the world thinks and they’re just going to make the art they know they can make. The best writers are the ones who can be completely honest with themselves and their thoughts (which is something I struggle with on occasion), the best actors are the ones who can engulf themselves fully in the character they want to portray, and the best musicians are the ones who can say this is the sound I want to make and I will make it. The Envy Corps have clearly made something that is exactly what they wanted and how they wanted..."
- from Dave Murphy on the Des Moines Is Not Boring website

"'Envy Corps is Radiohead for Coldplay fans.' That’s how the band has referenced itself in T-shirt form. And curiously, whether you take that as a statement of self-congratulation or one of oblivious pretentiousness, it doesn’t make the sentence any less fitting.

"The Envy Corps has always taken a high-minded approach to its own music. That some of it has brushed up against mainstream success seems more incidental than outright planned, and that suits the members of the band just fine. After the band found a measure of notoriety thanks to the song 'Gnats' being featured on an episode of HBO’s 'Entourage,' it has undergone a minor rebellion of sorts with the release of 2011’s 'It Culls You,' which eschewed a large amount of the pop sentiment found in 2009’s 'Dwell' and replaced it with the above-mentioned Radiohead pastiche.

"'We’ve had a troubled relationship with pop music over the last few years,' said guitarist Brandon Darner. 'I think a lot of that comes from the feeling that that’s what people wanted from us.'

"The members of The Envy Corps have never seen themselves as momentum chasers, and the idea of releasing an album full of songs like 'Gnats,' just because it seems to be where the money is, has always kind of appalled them. At first blush, that seems like a contradiction for a band that’s gotten a paycheck from HBO, but Darner is quick to remind you that it was the mainstream that came calling on The Envy Corps, not the other way around."
- from Chad Taylor in Cityview